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Dudley, a cat, acquired me in 2001 when he was 2 or 3 years old. He brought his name with him. I supposed the name was a play on a cartoon character Dudley Do-Right. I simply called him Bud.

Bud died this morning. After a 3 day decline, his body simply shut down. If the standard metric that a year of a cat’s life is equivalent to five years of human life, Bud had lived long, and by his own acknowledgment, well.

Lacking front claws (a peculiar bourgeois insistence of rescue cats) he had never been outside a house when he came to me. That quickly changed, and his adventures began. He lived with 3 large dogs…and charmed all of them.

He was a fine mouser, a terror to feral cats, a stalker of small birds and bugs of all kinds. Late in his life, he liked to lie in the sun on the front porch, a repose sometimes interrupted by local crows who would spot a mouse running in the herb garden below and in front of the porch. Screaming at him, they chided him to catch that mouse, leave the carcass for them to harvest. Usually he ignored this, but sometimes complied. As always he lived by his rules, his pleasures, his purposes.

“We could, perhaps, be lovers – “ you whispered in my hand and disappeared to Indiana, one year ago. That night, August heat, black lake, poplar wind composed a world apart, and I remember long hair trailing, white arms stroking, you swimming to meet the fallen moon.

Spring, as they are fond of saying, has sprung.Tulips shove above snow wet leaves to grab the sunand daffodils shake to herald events.Impertinent violets take their place as hyacinthsadorn themselves in regal blue vestments.

Dreaming of long afternoons of sun,I fail to see the robin or hear the cardinal’s early call to mate. Slow to rake the soggy leaf mold from the hardy chives, I begin to feel the waste of winter and the rush of spring.

Above, the snow geese by their hundreds flyto float upon the river’s edge in thousands, to feed in raucous mirth,reassemble, shouting eagerness to trythe far thawed tundra and, once again, know birth.

The trumpet vine, at least as old as I am,will not die. It sprouts and twines, breeds and twistsinto the sun to blossom. Growing within a youngerVirginia creeper hedged unruly in its habits,this old vine discharges blooms shouting orange disrespectful of the foliage green. I cannot kill it. My failure though delights the hummingbirds and bees, soperhaps a balance claims us all.

Held in reserve, we ran to top a hill,an ordinary hill of no great height,wooded, and rock covered as if the Creator had sown rocks like grains.I’ve seen much the same in Maine or in New Hampshire.

No sooner there than all of Alabama seemed to mob us howling bloodlust.We crouched and fireduntil our long guns grew too hot to load,and when there was nothing left to loadwe threw rocks.

Alabama kept coming, retreating, surgingup. And all while the screams of the woundedfilled our ears, smoke blinded us and powder burned our lips to cinder. Then, up and fixing bayonets,we wheeled left and ran down the hill likesome great scythe against the summer wheat.

Alabama fell to Maine. Men sobbed and swore, prayed and stabbed. We sat and wept for joy and failure, bound by the struggle itself.While the wounded cried for mother,the ground drank our mingled blood indifferent to our causes.

Charlie dug in and holds a hill.The hill is nondescript and has no name we can pronounce,just a number. Who cares? Starve them out or let the flyboysdrop their napalm glory. But no.We have to take it by force of arms

and legs and opened guts. It was impregnable,but tell that to generals dreaming of another star on collars or politicians in padded leather chairsfearing the wrath of disillusioned voters.We fought till water was a dream and choppers plummetedlike locusts from the sky exploding dreams.

We fought prone behind our own dead.We cannot rest because the enemy is everywherecrawling from his bunkers. Deafened, burned by our own artillery,our Hell seems endless. Lord, what have we done- or failed to do – that we must suffer here where only flies are victors?